Oscar-nominated director Simon Leerg Wilmont on working with Ukrainian children in A House Made Of Splitters: It’s about understanding “their hopes, dreams, fears.”

In the Oscar-nominated documentary A house of splinters, Eva, a girl from an orphanage in eastern Ukraine, plays catch with a friend and throws soap bubbles back and forth. As light streams in through a curtained window, Eva cradles the wafer-thin balls, her hands lathered with soap to keep the bubbles from bursting.

In reality, they and those of other children at the shelter are as delicate as these iridescent bullets and just as prone to cracking. They are the unprecedented victims of Russia’s war on Ukraine, a conflict that simmered for years before last February’s full-scale Russian invasion. Eva and children like her were sent to the facility after their parents – under the stress of the Russian-backed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine – were unable to provide for their children’s basic needs.

At the shelter A house of splinters It may not look like much – it could use a coat of paint and is located on the grounds of a drab hospital – but the women who run it show a deep sensitivity as they look after the children’s emotional well-being. Wilmont says he felt that way from the moment he first visited the shelter.

“I remember exactly [caregiver] Marharyta stood up and gave two kids an angry hug while yelling at a parent on the phone,” the director recalled during a question-and-answer session Sunday at the Laemmle Royal Theater in Los Angeles. “The whole place seemed to radiate comfort and care.”

In the documentary, Eva tries to reach her mother by phone. There is no answer. She then calls her grandmother and during the conversation refers to her mother’s obvious alcoholism. “I want her to stop drinking,” she told her grandmother, “so we can start over.”

From the off, one of the guards from the nearby town remarks: “Every 10^e Behind the door lies a broken family’, which admits that the Russian-backed separatist movement in Donbass has devastated the region’s economy, increased unemployment and dramatically increased alcohol and drug abuse. “Life here has always been difficult,” says the caretaker. “But the war made it worse.”

Wilmont, a Danish filmmaker based in Copenhagen, also made his documentary in 2017 The distant barking of dogs in the east of Ukraine, also against the background of the roar of war. For A house of splinters“We started filming from April 2019 to October 2020,” he explained. “I would go there every other month, that’s right, and stay there for seven to 14 days.”

In addition to Eva, the film focuses on Sasha, a girl who somehow accepts life in the shelter, and Kolya, a boy who cuts himself and draws tattoos on his arms with magic markers. This type of self-harm seems to indicate inner turmoil. , but he takes a diabolical attitude towards the women who run the asylum. When Kolya’s mother comes to visit (he notices the smell of alcohol on her breath), she asks him about the cuts on his arm and hugs him. His seemingly tough exterior dissolves as tears roll down his cheeks.

Wilmont also worked with children in his earlier film; In A house of splinters He again shows an unusual ability to reveal the emotional life of children. During the Q&A he talked about his approach.

“I make my own camera and I make my own sound. Well, it’s really just me and my assistant [a] Ukrainian deputy director,” he said. “We spend a tremendous amount of time getting to know the kids, having fun with them, trying to understand their everyday lives and understanding their hopes, dreams and fears to really see them.”

He added, “I’m also very focused on letting them know that if there’s anything they’re uncomfortable with that I’m filming, they should just raise their hand or just walk away or say stop. And on those incidents where they actually do, I take my word for it and put the camera away, even though it might be a scene that looks like “gold”. I think over time it also creates a certain mutual trust between us that they know who I am and what I do there, but they also know me and I know them. I have two children about the same age as her. And I love interacting with all of them and seeing the world through their eyes. I find it very fascinating.”

Unlike the other Oscar-nominated documentaries this year, A house of splinters went most of awards season without an American distributor. However, this has recently changed. As Deadline reported last month, Giant Pictures acquired the US theatrical and VOD rights to the documentary; It is currently playing at select Alamo Drafthouse locations across the country and is available on digital platforms such as Apple TV and Prime Video. Separately, the PBS series pov has acquired broadcast rights for the film and plans to present it on public television channels in the summer povis 36^e Season.

The Lysychansk air raid shelter now stands empty in a depleted area currently controlled by Russian forces. Wilmont says a grenade went through the roof of the building but did not explode; The warhead takes an ominous position in the middle of the deserted living room. The children escaped safely the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the director reports.

“Someone in the city council acted super fast [of Lysychansk] and already on the morning of February 24 [2022]they put all the children from the orphanages in the area on a train … and they drove them west,” Wilmont said. “It was a trip that took almost three days because they had to keep the train going stop because of the mortars, the tanks and the war development in those early days. But they only reached the western parts of Ukraine safely. And when they were hit by rocket attacks, they even took some of the children to temporary orphanages in Europe, where they have spent most of the past year.”

Despite the trauma of the children of A house of splintersWilmont sees the documentary as hopeful in some ways because it shows both the resilience of children and the difference loving caregivers can make around them.

“It was very important to me to see if I could capture the moments when the children shined as these beautiful and wonderful beings that they are,” he said, “and the hope that they carry with them.”